Managing Death (6 page)

Suzanne smiles thinly. Her dark eyes regard me impassively.

Suzanne’s got a Severe – yes, with a capital S – sort of Southern Gothic thing going on. Her hair is cut into a bob. A black dress follows sharp lines down her lean body. Pale and muscular limbs jut from the sleeves. It’s certainly not sensible garb for the cold fringes of the Underworld. She could be going out for the night, or about to chair a meeting. If she could get away with it in the Deepest Dark, if it wasn’t so dark, I guess she’d be wearing black sunglasses. She glances at the tracksuit pants and tatty old jumper I’m wearing beneath my dad’s old duffel coat, and sniffs.

‘So, Suzanne, just what is it that you can do for me?’

She smiles condescendingly. ‘I chose this place because it is important to you.’

Above us the sky is luminous with souls, glowing faintly red, heading out through the ether to wherever
souls go once life and the Underworld is done with them. It should be peaceful except there’s a great spiralling void, like a photo negative of a galaxy, eating up one corner of the sky, and it’s getting bigger. The Stirrer god.

In the distance, maybe a kilometre away, is Devour, the Stirrer city. Its high walls glow a colour very similar to my watch. I rode a bike through there a few months ago, fleeing for my life and for the life of the woman I love.

That Stirrer god, though, is hard to ignore. It’s a sinister dark stain on the pants front of Hell and it’s getting bigger. Sometimes it’s a great eye, as I remember it, sometimes a million eyes, staring down. Leering at the Underworld.

I’ve felt the weight of the god’s vast and angry gaze upon me, and I’ve stared back at it. So I’ve a personal stake in all of this, but then when that god arrives, life itself, from bacteria up, will be under threat. It’s amazing, though, just how much people are pretending that it isn’t going to happen. RMs, my colleagues. People who should know better.

‘You chose this place because you knew it gives you an advantage over me,’ I say.

‘What a cynic.’

‘I prefer to call it realism.’ I point towards the dark god in the sky. ‘Maybe it’s just too big. Maybe it’s something that we can’t do anything about at all. But we have to try.’

‘What do you know about that thing up there?’ she asks.

‘That the Stirrers worship it and that it’s drawing closer. What else is there?’

Suzanne waves her hand dismissively, as though the Stirrer god was nothing more than a buzzing insect. ‘Look, I want to offer you a deal. Think about all the resources you would have at your disposal. My offices, my staff – they’re much bigger than yours. And that difference in staffing is even larger now after your little problem.’

The ‘little’ problem she’s referring to, the one that led to my promotion, wiped out Mortmax’s Australian offices and, almost, due to a minor Regional Apocalypse, Australia’s living population. Workplace politics can be genocidal in my line of business. And when things get that way they have a tendency to spill out into the world. The Spanish Flu, the Black Death – they were both preceded by ‘problems’ in my industry.

‘You let that happen, too.’ I glare at her. None of the RMs stepped in to help. In the end it had been left up to me. ‘All of you are guilty of that.’

Suzanne’s eyes narrow just enough that I know I’ve got to her. ‘You know the rules,’ she says, ‘our hands were tied. Morrigan manipulated us.’

Morrigan manipulated me more than anyone. But I’m not going to let Suzanne get away with her comment. ‘Excuses aren’t going to save the world. Morrigan
was small time compared to
that
.’ I point at the Stirrer god amassing on the horizon.

Suzanne raises her hands placatingly. ‘I have my best people working on it,’ she says. I open my mouth to speak but she jumps in first. ‘But that’s not why I’m here. You need me.’

‘Like a coronary.’ My turn for a condescending grin.

Suzanne grimaces, though I can see that I’ve amused her, which makes me a little grumpier. ‘Try not to be so aggressive. Yes, this is scary for you, Steven, I understand that. You’re a newly negotiated RM, in the process of building up your Pomps. It’s going to be years before you’re at full strength. You’re vulnerable. You can barely shift without throwing up.’

Fair assessment so far. But I can’t let it lie. ‘I’ll get better.’

‘Of course you will,’ she says, ‘but I can help you. I can ease the transition. I can lend you more Pomps, for one thing.’ She reaches out, squeezes my hand. Her fingers are warm. I pull away, and Suzanne frowns, but not with anger. She dips her head, even manages a smile. ‘I understand exactly what you’re going through. I can guide you.’

‘I’ve already got Mr D for that.’

Suzanne’s face tightens, her smile attenuates, whatever humour there was in her eyes leaves with it. I’m familiar with that expression – I tend to bring it out in people, and Mr D was even better at it than me.

‘Mr D was never one of us,’ she says. ‘You want a second-rate mentor? You stick with that idiot. I’m giving you a chance.’ She bends down, grabs a handful of the dust which coats everything here, and lets it fall. Only it doesn’t. The dust drifts around her lazily, glowing in all the colours of a particularly luminous acid trip. It spirals around her head creating a halo, and beneath it she’s all shadows, sharp angles and full lips. The darkest points of her face are her eyes. When she smiles, her teeth are white and straight. ‘No one understands this place, this job, like I do. Just consider it. That’s all I’m asking.’

‘And what do you get out of it?’

‘I get an ally, Mr de Selby, and one who is aware of his powers and limits, one who doesn’t go off rushing madly into things, making it difficult for everyone. Mr D isolated himself. He never really bothered with us. Sometimes I think he delighted in making enemies. When you think about all the people who died – all that you’ve lost – remember who let it happen. Morrigan had the schemes, but Mr D allowed him to flourish in your branch.’

She has a point.

‘Steven, I liked your family. Michael and Annie were good people. The things your father did for Mortmax … He even lifted our profits in the States.’

I can imagine Dad rolling in his grave at that. He’d always been slightly embarrassed by his business acumen. All he’d really wanted was to be a Pomp. Now
Dad, if pressed, would have made a great RM. Mum, too. I wish they were here. I wish I knew what they would do.

Suzanne shivers. It’s cold here, and I doubt she would ever show such vulnerability willingly, but my father raised me this way: I shrug out of my coat and put it around her shoulders. She’s wearing Chanel No. 5, my mother’s favourite perfume. I remember coming home, after my parents had died. The house had smelled of it and it was the first time the reality of their deaths really hit me. It was also the first time that I wondered if moving into their place was a mistake.

I pull away. Suzanne doesn’t notice, or pretends not to, though she does look at me oddly. ‘You are a gentleman, Mr de Selby.’

I open my mouth to speak, but she’s already gone. ‘Hey! What about my coat?’

All I have to answer me is dust falling to the ground again. I crouch down and scoop up my own handful. In my palms it’s just dust, gritty and grey. I open my fingers and it drops. Only the souls in the sky, and the nearby city of Stirrers, offer any light.

My right biceps tingles, then burns. Ah, finally. Wal crawls out from under my shirt and stares up at me.

‘I don’t trust her,’ Wal says. No surprise there, that’s Wal’s standard response, though it’s been proven remarkably accurate.

‘Where were you?’ I ask.

‘Stuck to your arm,’ he says, looking more than a little chagrined. ‘She stopped me, I don’t know how. But she did it well.’

I grin at him cruelly. ‘Ah, so there are things, very
useful
things, she could teach me.’

Wal slaps me across the face with all the force of a handful of tissues. ‘You shut your mouth.’

He actually looks hurt.

A dim hooting comes from the city of Devour – like a parliament of malevolent and fractious owls. Bells ring and, all around us, the dead whisper their brittle, final whispers before drifting out of hearing and further into the Deepest Dark.

The air chills. Both of us feel it. I don’t have my coat anymore, but Wal is the only one who is naked.

He shivers. ‘I don’t like this place.’

He’s not the only one.

‘I
can’t believe I’m going to be late!’

Most of my clothes are in piles in the bedroom. But my suit, one of eight I own, hangs in the wardrobe. A Pomp never leaves their suit on the floor. Never. And I’m RM now, I have to set the standard. I slip into it like a second skin. It’s Italian, and cost me three weeks’ salary – and that’s my current salary. This meeting with Cerbo is formal; tracksuit and jumper just isn’t going to cut it. Lissa watches, then hits me with the most deafening wolf whistle. I can’t understand how she finds this body attractive. OK, maybe a little, I do work out. And the suit looks pretty fine. But still, I feel my cheeks flush at Lissa’s scrutiny.

I knot my tie, straighten everything, and even I have to admit that I look good.

Though not nearly as lovely as Lissa. I want to be back in bed with her. We never seem to spend enough time together. A moment apart is an ache in my chest. Tim might be right, new love and all that. But I never felt this intensely for Robyn. And Lissa is the only woman I have ever pursued to Hell.

‘Maybe I should call off this meeting, spend the morning with you. You’re not working till late, I’ve seen the schedule. We could …’

Lissa appears to give this some serious thought. ‘No, Tim would kill you, and me. Not after all we’ve done trying to get you engaged with the business again. The Moot’s a week away. You’ve got to – stop that!’

She doesn’t push me away, though, as my lips brush her neck. Then – I feel her body stiffening with the effort of it – she does, and I’m backing off the bed, away from the intoxicating smell of her. ‘You’ll crush your suit, or, at the very least, stretch the front of those pants.’

‘Oh.’ I look down. ‘I see what you mean.’

And I’m blushing once more. Lissa grins at me wickedly. I straighten my suit again.

Yeah, new love. Such new, new love.

‘How do I look?’

‘You’re the bomb,’ she says.

‘The bomb?’

Lissa laughs at me. ‘Just get out of here. Or your cousin will have an aneurism.’

‘How’s the hair?’

She squints at me. ‘Still thinning.’

‘I hate you.’

‘No, you don’t.’

I kiss her again, and then I shift to Number Four.

It’s another body punch of a shift. I miss my office by about fifteen metres. End up at the reception desk. Lundwall blinks at me.

Number Four. This is Australia’s Pomp Central, and the major node in the southern hemisphere’s Underworld–living world interface, which makes the architecture interesting in a multi-dimensional kind of way. Outside one part of the building, Brisbane is in the middle of a boiling, sweating summer. And outside another part, Hell is going through a rather mild spring. The seasons rarely correspond. In here, the air is loud with the hum of air-conditioners and the creaking of the One Tree.

Phones ring throughout the office. People are working busily and trying hard to ignore me and my clumsy entrance. I get the feeling that Tim has been doing a fair bit of storming around this morning. Tim is great at his job, but you don’t want to get him mad. He says it doesn’t help that I’m so casual about the whole thing. Well, I think we balance each other out perfectly.

But I
would
think that.

I stumble over to Tim’s office and open the door without knocking. He’s stubbing out a cigarette when I appear and looks guilty.

‘Gotcha,’ I say.

‘What if I was having a wank or something here?’

I smirk. ‘Hardly. If you had to choose between smokes and masturbation there’s no contest.’

‘Ah, your deductive capabilities astound me, Holmes.’

Other than the ashtray heaped with cigarettes, Tim’s room is as neat as an anally retentive pin. I’m more than a little envious of his work ethic. His inbox
and out are emptied throughout the day and there’s a well-marked year-planner on one wall. Seven days from now, on the 28th of December, the Death Moot begins. He’s circled that day, and the two that follow it, in thick red marker. I’ve a year-planner somewhere under the mess on my desk.

This was once Morrigan’s office. Tim hasn’t changed it that much, apart from the photo of Sally and the kids next to his keyboard – I bought him the frame. He’s even using the same daily desk calendar, the one with the inspirational quotes. Everything from Dorothy Parker to Sun Tzu is in there. He and Morrigan shared a deep commitment to work, a fastidiousness about everything in their life, and a love of beer, though Tim has never tried to kill me. But the way he’s looking at me, maybe that’s all about to change.

Then the pain of the shift hits me in a residual wave.

Tim waits politely until I finish dry heaving before he starts taking strips off me. ‘Jesus, mate! Could you at least have a shower before coming to work?’

I shrug. No point telling him how hard it was to leave Lissa this morning. Then I see the bandage on his left hand. ‘Not like you to be out with the Stirrers. Was it a hard stir?’ Sometimes a Stirrer will require more blood than usual to stall it.

Tim shakes his head. ‘I wish, it’d mean I was out of the office more. No, the door’s being particularly demanding today.’ Number Four may be the only place that demands – well, not so much demands,
but takes – a blood sacrifice of its staff on entry. RMs are exempt, most of the time, something I’m pleased about. For me, it’s usually only a tiny pricking of the thumb, and weeks may go past where it asks for nothing. I wonder if the ferocity of Tim’s sacrifice has anything to do with the massive portent I spent part of last night cleaning from the bathroom.

Tim throws me a small spray can of deodorant. I manage to catch it before it hits my head. Then he hurls a pack of breath mints. Not so lucky with those, they skitter all over the desk. I scoop up a few of them.